Transformers: The Movie Writer Ron Friedman Interview

Our friend Todd Matthy dropped by to let us know about a new interview he conducted with the writer of Transformers: The Movie, Ron Friedman. Transformers: The Movie ushered in a new cast of characters and saw the deaths of many fan favorites including Optimus Prime. The interview offers insights into Friedman's approach to writing the script, and reveals his reservations about killing off Optimus Prime. Click here to read the full article.

In the summer of 1986, children were traumatized when Optimus Prime sacrificed himself to stop his archrival, Megatron. But it wasn’t Megatron who pulled the trigger, it was a writer named Ron Friedman.

Ron Friedman wrote Transformers: The Movie. He wrote the five-part miniseries that launched GI Joe. He is close friends with Stan Lee and helped Stan develop The Marvel Action Hour, featuring Iron Man and Fantastic Four. He has written episodes of All in the Family, Happy Days, and Fantasy Island. In addition to his writing credentials, Ron is an architect and a teacher at Chapman University.

In 2014, Ron plans to chronicle his experiences as a writer in the memoir, I Killed Optimus Prime. The book promises a fascinating look behind the scenes of the shows that defined our childhood.

I had the privilege of speaking with Ron about his career, his friendship with Stan Lee, what he thought when he first saw the Transformers, how Orson Welles became Unicron, and why he didn’t want to kill Optimus Prime.

So, to kick off the 30th Anniversary of the Transformers, click below to learn about Ron Friedman, the man who wrote the movie.

Optimus Prime was the transcendental figure that is the glue for every legend or story. The transcendental character of big daddy, big brother, your personal champion, the repository of all that is good and worthy. He was the true center of the Autobot family. I think about the gathering of various comic icons and their peers as families. Who was Megatron? The worst possible father figure. He topped King John in the days of Robin Hood. Who was Starscream? He’s Iago, the treacherous second in command, the bad uncle or younger brother who lusts after his older brothers wife. I recognized that I needed to assign family identities to characters in order to create the recognition factor that young people need. They cannot verbalize this; it’s beneath the surface. To remove Optimus Prime, to physically remove Daddy from the family, that’s wasn’t going to work. I told Hasbro and their lieutenants they would have to bring him back but they said no and had “great things planned.” In other words they were going to create new more expensive toys.

It's intriguing to me to hear some behind-the-scenes stuff from back then, but with a title like that, the sales of the book will most likely be limited to TF fans, if not mainly Geewunners.

As for killing Optimus, because they had "great things planned," Rodimus is reviled by the majority of the fandom because he wasn't Optimus. To me that was 1 of the things that made me a fan. But he wasn't appealing to kids, and he was shoehorned into the role to sell toys by the writers at the order of Hasbro. So who's at fault of the general failure of Season 3 and its stories and characters?

El Duque wrote:[quote]Optimus Prime was the transcendental figure that is the glue for every legend or story. The transcendental character of big daddy, big brother, your personal champion, the repository of all that is good and worthy.

Rodimus Prime wrote:As for killing Optimus, because they had "great things planned," Rodimus is reviled by the majority of the fandom because he wasn't Optimus. To me that was 1 of the things that made me a fan. But he wasn't appealing to kids, and he was shoehorned into the role to sell toys by the writers at the order of Hasbro. So who's at fault of the general failure of Season 3 and its stories and characters?

Wow! Ron Friedman himself acknowledges that Optimus is an icon. I remember a few years back of a mod from a backwater site stating that it wasn't Optimus or Megatron who was the icon but Peter Cullen and Frank Welker.......jeez louise............trying to wax sage like

Rodimus Prime wrote:As for killing Optimus, because they had "great things planned," Rodimus is reviled by the majority of the fandom because he wasn't Optimus. To me that was 1 of the things that made me a fan. But he wasn't appealing to kids, and he was shoehorned into the role to sell toys by the writers at the order of Hasbro. So who's at fault of the general failure of Season 3 and its stories and characters?

There are a lot of things that don't feel right about this interview. As in, to me, it sounds like Friedman is pulling some revisionist history.

Here's what doesn't feel right:

Unpopular things that were totally not his idea

Killing Optimus Prime
]The time jump from S2 to the movie

Popular things that were totally all his idea

Unicron
Orson Welles voicing Unicron
Arcee and fembots in general
The basis for GI Joe's voices

I could go on.

So he doesn't ever talk to the writers of the show and didn't know about things going on in it, but was doing rewrites of them when they approached him about the movie? Did I read that right?

I've purposely put the word feel in here, because I'm having trouble actually finding real evidence to refute him. Gotta be fair on that. My brain, during my initial read of the interview, was thinking of all these places where he's contradicted, but I'll be damned if I can find them. I think the interviewer does a tremendous job of pointing out some of the perceived contradictions without being too much of a douche about it, and that is a good thing.

tldr; I think he's exaggerating the truth and revising history to get people to go buy his book, and that kind of sucks.

Flint Dille's premature reaction to this interview (I say "premature" as Dille actually hadn't read the interview yet when he wrote this) - [quote]As I said to Pete Sinclair, the truth is that Hasbro killed Optimus Prime. Nobody else would have had the authority to do so. Ron and Jay, Nelson and I were only acting under orders.

Haven't read the interview yet, but Secret Of Cyberton and Ron's script were both very seminal to the movie, but both were, in and of themselves, rejected but were extremely influential on the final movie which would be written over the next year or so.

We didn't work directly with Ron, he came before us. Rons was a brilliant warehouse of ideas, scenes and images... Many of which were used. And god knows, Ron owns a huge part of Transformers history. He had the task of trying to somehow merge a million requests from various people into one cogent script... He was the first one into the breach.

Jay and I were second and we stayed in the breach for well over a year.. We wrote 'secret' in a week in my apartment in a week. I was holed up the Grand Hyatt for Summer '85 (I think it was '85) rewriting and doing show stuff. It was an attempt to merge Ron's script with the show and too much 'Hero of A Thousand Faces' I'd consumed.

Tom and Joe couldn't wrap their head around the idea of Cybertron being a giant transforming Robot who was the only thing in the universe that could defeat Unicron.). And maybe they were right. That story wasn't about our toy heroes as much (though there was a glorious charge of the light brigade' that wiped out the 85 product line).

There's another lost version of the story and that was Nelson Shin's version of the script. I'm not sure whether it was a script or a storyboard.

As I said before, neither this script nor 99% of scripts anywhere is a virgin birth. They are all collaborations. This script was more collaborative than almost anything because there were so many people involved in the toys and the movie and the show. In some ways, everybody who worked on Season's 1 and 2 left some DNA in the movie.

He wrote the first draft of the movie, so he probably killed him first. Unless Joe or Jay dictated the plot, I'd have no idea about that. The thing that was ultimately really interesting from a franchise point of view was what happened after he was killed.

It's good to read Flint Dille's take on things, I usually take him at his word. From his comments, are we to understand that they had planned to reveal Primus as the robot mode of Cybertron even back then? And have an actual showdown with Unicron in the '86 movie?

Rodimus Prime wrote:It's good to read Flint Dille's take on things, I usually take him at his word. From his comments, are we to understand that they had planned to reveal Primus as the robot mode of Cybertron even back then? And have an actual showdown with Unicron in the '86 movie?

No, the robot mode of Cybertron they had planned for "The Secret of Cybertron" wasn't Primus, it was just Cybertron in a robot mode. Simon Furman created the Primus character two years after the movie came out, and the concept of Primus being Cybertron's robot mode wouldn't come about until... was it the early 2000s? Something like that.

Rodimus Prime wrote:It's good to read Flint Dille's take on things, I usually take him at his word. From his comments, are we to understand that they had planned to reveal Primus as the robot mode of Cybertron even back then? And have an actual showdown with Unicron in the '86 movie?

No, the robot mode of Cybertron they had planned for "The Secret of Cybertron" wasn't Primus, it was just Cybertron in a robot mode. Simon Furman created the Primus character two years after the movie came out, and the concept of Primus being Cybertron's robot mode wouldn't come about until... was it the early 2000s? Something like that.

Yup, it came from one of the War Within series, concept designed by Don Figueroa God damn is that a complicated name) and very likely thought up by Simon Furman, since he was the writer of those series.

The Cybertron robot thing was basically just a gigantic Gundam.

This interview is kinda interesting, and I agree with ScottyP, there are a few things that seem a little off with this. But I like the book title, it sounds like he's confessing to murder.

And yea, it is really interesting and funny to see all these people suddenly come out of the woodwork and associate themselves in a pretty public way with Transformers. Kinda like Floro Dery, just he's more believable since he's been doing it ever since the internet existed, and has load of tangible prof for his claims.

Can't wait for Frank Miller to try to get just a little bit more fame by pointing out his connection to Transformers.

Autobots were cars, Decepticons were jets, tanks and big robots disguised as small items meant to deceive. There was a difference in the two factions fighting each other. Underdogs against impossible odds... poor little sports cars versus big bad military vehicles. In 1985 Hasbro got greedy and threw this winning formula out the window and Transformers has been in decline ever since. Even the hacks at IDW get this simple concept right with their creations. Drift is a car, Turmoil is a tank. Apparently IDW is even smarter than the fandom who voted into creation yet another AUTObot jet.

"once you establish an icon, you're a fool if you don't try to preserve it".

The 1984 cast are the true Transformers. Everything else is an imitation. The Transformers brand will not reach it's true potential until the season 1 Transformers are brought back. Plain and simple.

Rodimus Prime wrote:It's good to read Flint Dille's take on things, I usually take him at his word. From his comments, are we to understand that they had planned to reveal Primus as the robot mode of Cybertron even back then? And have an actual showdown with Unicron in the '86 movie?

No, the robot mode of Cybertron they had planned for "The Secret of Cybertron" wasn't Primus, it was just Cybertron in a robot mode. Simon Furman created the Primus character two years after the movie came out, and the concept of Primus being Cybertron's robot mode wouldn't come about until... was it the early 2000s? Something like that.

Thanks. Nice to have a know-it-all among us. Comes in handy once in a while.

84forever wrote:"people do not understand what it is that is making them successful".

Autobots were cars, Decepticons were jets, tanks and big robots disguised as small items meant to deceive. There was a difference in the two factions fighting each other. Underdogs against impossible odds... poor little sports cars versus big bad military vehicles. In 1985 Hasbro got greedy and threw this winning formula out the window and Transformers has been in decline ever since. Even the hacks at IDW get this simple concept right with their creations. Drift is a car, Turmoil is a tank. Apparently IDW is even smarter than the fandom who voted into creation yet another AUTObot jet.

"once you establish an icon, you're a fool if you don't try to preserve it".

The 1984 cast are the true Transformers. Everything else is an imitation. The Transformers brand will not reach it's true potential until the season 1 Transformers are brought back. Plain and simple.

Lol, way to quote something out of context and then completely missing the point, and going so far that it makes you look like a parody of a G1 fan, which is underscored by your name.

84forever wrote:"people do not understand what it is that is making them successful".

Autobots were cars, Decepticons were jets, tanks and big robots disguised as small items meant to deceive. There was a difference in the two factions fighting each other. Underdogs against impossible odds... poor little sports cars versus big bad military vehicles. In 1985 Hasbro got greedy and threw this winning formula out the window and Transformers has been in decline ever since. Even the hacks at IDW get this simple concept right with their creations. Drift is a car, Turmoil is a tank. Apparently IDW is even smarter than the fandom who voted into creation yet another AUTObot jet.

"once you establish an icon, you're a fool if you don't try to preserve it".

The 1984 cast are the true Transformers. Everything else is an imitation. The Transformers brand will not reach it's true potential until the season 1 Transformers are brought back. Plain and simple.

You know, I've seen a lot of somewhat inaccurate use of the term "GEEWUN" around here over the past week or so, mostly in the Windblade and Whirl threads, so I thank 1984ever 4 straightening things out: THIS post is what GEEWUN is really about. Attempting to narrow the meaning of G1 down to just the stretch that you most enjoyed, in order to hijack the words of Transfans like myself who happen to at least sort of like all of G1 (both the decade we originally got, and the vestiges in comics and toys since) into instead reenforcing your own view that the areas of G1 you didn't like are somehow "less G1" or "not even Transformers". Over the years, this has only helped fuel casual fans' misconceptions of when Generation 2 started to the point where many honestly seem to believe that G2 means the areas or gimmicks of G1 that they didn't like: i.e., ______-masters and Pretenders being "GEETOO" despite none of those gimmicks existing in the G2 toyline (well, there were different Powermasters...)

Personally, I've always felt that killing Optimus Prime to enhance the drama of TFTM was the greatest, ballsiest move ever taken by any toy-franchise media, and that the Season 3 was where the cartoon finally got going, with the ancient cosmic war finally roaring into present tense, the essence of what Transformers had tried and failed to be for 2 years. And since I never felt the need to have and Autobot leader I could pretend was my dad (or whatever Op's appeal was), getting a new leader whose self-doubt a kid could actually identify with was a major upgrade. And if you look back on the times Optimus's wimpy leadership almost got his troops killed, Hot Rod really did his faction a favor by disposing of the old. So if anything, S3 was truest essence of a TF cartoon, meaning Seasons 1 and 2 had a greater taint of GEETOO: That's what the G2 cartoon mostly consisted of, right?

Then again, 3 post-movie eps did get the G2 treatment, so it's more likely that Transformers reached the apex of what it was supposed to be in 1988, with the all-time widest array of gimmicks showcasing the adaptability of these alien machines in ways that all that leftover Diaclone and Microchange stuff never could. Say, I didn't know about Diaclone when I was a kid, so it was probably GEETOO too, right? I mean, most geewunners I've met face-to-face seem to assume that's true of their favorite year, so I don't sound completely insane for asserting that 1988 was the only year for REAL TRANSFORMERS, do I?

Or, if I've misunderstood 1984forever's point and that post was just a joke, then I thank you sir for giving me the set up I needed to get that off my chest.

And Ron, even if it was against your will, thanks for pulling the trigger and giving TF it's finest hour. Yours will be my...well, second most essential 30th anniversary TF book after the one with all the package art. Oh to finally hold a picture of Slamdance without that pesky bubble in the way...

it's typical of this fandom how the last 3 guys to post just totally missed the point of this interview. Ron is saying that the source material was the best EVER and that Transformers should not have been changed so drastically.

The GEETOO comments just went over my head because I don't understand how you can compare it to G1 when GEETOO is a failed knockoff of G1.

Lastly, anyone who likes anything from '88 is not a true fan because that was the year that killed Transformers. It's like being a fan of both John Lennon and Mark David Chapman at the same time. It was like going from Batman to everything being Batman Beyond, and then following the adventures of a midget Bruce Wayne in a giant plastic bat suit with a seam in the middle. People were like "what the hell is this crap? This is not the Transformers I know". By '89 Transformers was already dead and stinking.

In order to comply with the FTC's endorsement guidelines, we hereby inform this site's viewers that we occasionally receive sample products, content, or other forms of media from various companies in order for us to provide content of interest to our readers. Some of the content on this site are sponsored posts for which we have been compensated. Some of the links to external sites posted on this site may automatically be converted to an affiliate link for which we may be compensated.

6,509 pages were recently viewed by 520 unique visitors. This page loaded in 0.05248 seconds and was viewed 1 times on Friday, December 9th 2016 9:01pm CST